As many labs have established, Dr. Zaghloul’s team knew that our episodic memories are controlled by neurons in at least two different parts of the brain, but they did not know exactly how the cells worked together to retrieve memories. Based on a growing of body of evidence, they suspected that the short, high frequency electrical waves seen in ripples may somehow be involved. For instance, two earlier patient studies suggested that ripples may be important for solidifying memories during sleep.

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A sound, a smell, a word can all flood our minds with memories of past experiences. In a study of epilepsy patients, researchers at the National Institutes of Health found that split seconds before we recall these events tiny electrical waves, called ripples, may flow through key parts of our brains that help store our memories, setting the stage for successful retrieval.

“We showed for the first time that ripples may be the neural substrates through which the human brain successfully recalls memories,” said Kareem Zaghloul, M.D., Ph.D., a neurosurgeon-researcher at the NIH’s National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS) and senior author of the study published in Science. “These results help us understand how the brain processes the details of our past waking experiences or episodic memories.”

The study was led by Alex P. Vaz, B.S., an M.D., Ph.D. student at Duke University, Durham, North Carolina, who was completing his dissertation work with Dr. Zaghloul. For years, Dr. Zaghloul’s team has been using grids of surgically implanted electrodes to record the electrical brain activity of drug resistant epilepsy patients enrolled in a trial at the NIH’s Clinical Center. The recordings have helped identify the source of a patient’s epileptic seizures as well as provide an opportunity to study how the brain encodes memories.

We are learning more about fungal infection and neurological diseases. Recently we learned of gingival diseases and Alzheimer’s. My wonder is how plants such as Moringa in one’s diet, that have antifungal properties, can help.

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Fungal infections are emerging as a major medical challenge, and a team led by researchers at Baylor College of Medicine has developed a mouse model to study the short-term consequences of fungal infection in the brain.

The researchers report in the journal Nature Communications the unexpected finding that the common yeast Candida albicans, a type of fungus, can cross the blood-brain barrier and trigger an inflammatory response that results in the formation of granuloma-type structures and temporary mild memory impairments in mice. Interestingly, the granulomas share features with plaques found in Alzheimer’s disease, supporting future studies on the long-term neurological consequences of sustained C. albicans infection.

“An increasing number of clinical observations by us and other groups indicates that fungi are becoming a more common cause of upper airway allergic diseases such as asthma, as well as other conditions such as sepsis, a potentially life-threatening disease caused by the body’s response to an infection,” said corresponding author Dr. David B. Corry, professor of medicine-immunology, allergy and rheumatology and Fulbright Endowed Chair in Pathology at Baylor College of Medicine.